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Boca Ballroom Diary Part IX

Jul 23rd 2013

I no longer know what week this is, which is the kind of thing prisoners in solitary say. In my case, I am just getting a little tired. I keep going to dance class and realizing I will never be tall. Or lithe. Or graceful. And we still have not learned the whole ending to my dance, which worries me. My handsome and ever-hopeful dance instructor James said he is thinking of something “aerial” which stopped me dead in my fox trot.

“You could not lift me in one thousand tears,” I told him.

“I was thinking that maybe you’d lift me,” he said.

That might work.

Speaking of lifting, I got a glimpse of Chris Palermo at practice yesterday who was slinging around his partner like he was Derek Hough; I was impressed. I also ran into Marie Occhigrossi, who is fake tanning herself by degrees and may be the funniest woman I have ever met in Boca. I wish I could share her comments thus far but I can’t. Fearless Dardano is shaking it up and I hear Dorothy MacDiarmid is killing it. Brockelman is MIA, and Gary Collins is gaining big ground. Our new contestant, Robyn Nassetta--who happens to be blonde and lithe AND graceful--is reportedly surfing in Panama as we speak, having learned her dance in about 10 minutes. I am sorry, Robyn, I have not met you yet but I am already not liking you at all.

So there we are, heading to the studio, taking group classes (I took one called muchacha or Macchiato or something like that last night) and looking for costumes. But that is a whole other story.

In the meantime Fotis has reverted to being terrible, having had the audacity to up my weights and inflict a subtle Saturday morning torture on me he likes to call circuit training. “This will help you,” he says, as one by one, my limbs revert to jelly.

We are less than a month out and everyone keeps asking me if I am having fun. And all I hear is the Talking Heads: “This ain`t no party, this ain`t no disco, this ain`t no fooling around.”